Salvador Ruiz-Esquivelexecutive/school director & Co-founder

Salvador was born the eighth child in a family of nine siblings in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico in 1966. He began dancing Mexican Folklorico in elementary school and continued training through high school. He danced with a number of companies from 1985-89 in Guadalajara. Ruiz became a business owner of a Mexican furniture imports and interior design firm in Mexico in 1987. He became the co-owner of a business firm in Los Angeles in 1989 and relocated to Santa Fe in 1992.

Since moving to New Mexico, Ruiz has worked as a teaching artist in the Española Public Schools, teaching dance and visual arts to hundreds of K-6 children. In 2008, he and partner Roger Montoya co-founded Moving Arts Española. In 2011, he served as part of the founding team for La Tierra Montessori School of the Arts and Sciences, a state public charter school.

Mr. Ruiz believes that education through arts is essential in the growth and development of a healthy child, and utilizes his extensive business background to bring arts education to children.

roger montoyaartistic director & Co-founder

Roger was born in Denver Colorado in 1961. His Parents Jose Amado and Dorotea Montoya are the most important reasons he has succeeded as a dancer, painter and an Arts-in- Education advocate in northern New Mexico.

As a child Roger developed parallel interests in painting/visual arts and in movement, gymnastics and dance. As a teenager he earned a spot on a US gymnastics team that traveled to Romania, France and Denmark to train on an athletic /cultural exchange program. At 20, he received a merit scholarship to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in NYC where he was mentored by Louis Falco of the Limon Dance Company and Pearl Lang from the Martha Graham School. He apprenticed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and toured globally with the Parsons Dance company through 1990.

Roger is an accomplished self- taught landscape painter, producer, choreographer and founding member of Moving People Dance Santa Fe. From 1998-2007 he founded and coordinated the Arts in the Schools program for the Española Public School District that served 12 elementary schools and 3000+ K-6 students. Montoya co-founded the La Tierra Montessori School for the Arts and Sciences Charter School in 2012. He serves as a guest teacher/ lecturer at the New Mexico School for the Arts charter high school and the UNM dance department, as well as being the Artistic Director of Moving Arts Española.